How Would “Hannibal” Employ “Silence”?

In the wake of the end of “Hannibal” on NBC, series creator Bryan Fuller has given several interviews discussing where the show might go next if they are able to continue it. One issue has always been that Fuller did not have the rights to use the most famous of the Lecter novels – “The Silence of the Lambs” and the character of Clarice Starling.

Were the show to continue, he still hopes they could do it one day. Speaking with Crave Online, Fuller says:

“I absolutely do hope and would love to tell Silence of the Lambs with this cast. I love that novel and I think there’s fantastic ways to reimagine it for thirty years later, and… yes. Period.”

As the show has often shifted around plot points from the books, how would a season of the ‘Silence’ storyline work on “Hannibal”:

“I am imagining a parallel structure of Hannibal in the institution, with a severely scarred Chilton, now having returned to his post, and juxtaposing that, back in the heyday of Hannibal as a psychiatrist, perhaps even earlier than we met him the first time, when he had Benjamin Raspail as a patient, and weave that story in and around the modern day Silence of the Lambs tale as we know it.”

He also confirms that Barney and Clarice’s roommate Ardelia would play big parts. Asked about whom he would love to cast, he suggests his “Pushing Daisies” star Lee Pace in the role of Buffalo Bill. As for Clarice, he was thinking either Ellen Page or potentially an actress with a different racial background:

“There’s something about being poor and white in the South but there’s something else about being poor and black in the South, and I think it could be the necessary gateway into the character, to make Clarice as much our own signature character as we tried to make Will Graham.”

Without the ‘Silence’ rights, Fuller has previously said any potential fourth season of film continuation of “Hannibal” from this point would then have explore what he describes as a a ‘pocket’ from the novel “Hannibal” that has yet to be realised on screen in any form. He won’t go into details about that other than telling THR:

“I’m hoping that someday, whether it’s a year from now… two years from now… that we will continue to get to tell that story. I feel like Will Graham… his most interesting chapter is yet to be told.”